Verdict: Asus shows what the P35 chipset is capable of.

The P5K Premium WiFi-AP resides near the top of the P5K-series, Asus' all-encompassing range of Intel P35-based motherboards.

The P5K Premium WiFi-AP may be a top-tier motherboard but, as it supports cheap DDR2, building a system using the board will cost less than it would if you were to buy a P35 board that required costly DDR3.

Like most P35 motherboards, the P5K Premium WiFi-AP supports CrossFire but, as the second 16x PCI-E slot has only four PCI-E lanes, we wouldn't recommend splashing out on two graphics cards. The PCB is crammed with peripherals, such as two Gigabit Ethernet ports and an 802.11b/g wireless LAN controller. Despite this, there are three PCI slots and a pair of 1x PCI-E slots for adding further peripherals.

Commensurate with its £120-plus price tag, you'll find that the Northbridge, Southbridge and VRMs are cooled by a combination of heatsinks and heatpipes that snake their way across the PCB surface. Despite this, there's room on the PCB for six RAID-capable S-ATA II ports, plus an Intel HD Audio codec equipped with analogue outputs, and coaxial and optical S/PDIF outputs. Even with such a heavily laden PCB, none of the components interfere with one another and it's easy to fit a large HSF to the CPU socket.

The P5K Premium WiFi-AP was one of the best-tuned P35 motherboards we've seen, coming in just behind the cheekily pre-overclocked Abit IP35 Pro in our Media Benchmarks. However, the P5K Premium WiFi-AP has the IP35 Pro down on its knees begging for mercy when it comes to comparing the two motherboards' BIOSes. For example, the P5K Premium WiFi-AP can overvolt the CPU and RAM, Northbridge, FSB and even the CPU PLL, which can help to stabilise high FSB speeds, particularly with quad-core CPUs. With such a wide range of controls, the P5K Premium WiFi-AP was the best overclocking motherboard in this Labs test, and happily ran the benchmarks stably with an FSB of 540MHz. This is a pretty incredible achievement for a motherboard costing little more than £120, although it required us to send 2V through the CPU PLL (not recommended!), 1.5V through the FSB and 1.8V through the Northbridge.

While there are much cheaper P35 motherboards on the market, none offers the same level of features or overclockability as the P5K Premium WiFi-AP. As such, it would be our first choice when buying a new motherboard.

• Cases - 21st November 2008
• Motherboards - 24th October 2008
• Gaming Headsets - 26th September 2008
• Dream PCs - 24th September 2008
• Headphones - 12th September 2008
• Media PC components - 22nd August 2008
• PSUs - 14th July 2008

• Intel DG45FC - Motherboards
• Intel X25-M Mainstream SATA SSD - Hard disks / storage
• OCZ Core Series 30GB - Hard disks / storage
• Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB - Hard disks / storage
• Asus EAH4870 TOP - Graphics cards
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro - Sound cards
• Multiwinia - Games